The Statutes of a Gild of young Scholars formed to burn lights in honour of some saint or other, and to help one another in sickness, old age, and to burial, will be printed for us by Mr Toulmin Smith in the Early English Text Society’s books this year.
Under this head of Private Tuition we may class the houses of Abbots, where boys of good birth were educated. In his History of English Poetry, section 36, vol. iii. p. 9, ed. 1840, Warton says:
“It appears to have been customary for the governors of the most considerable convents, especially those that were honoured with the mitre, to receive into their own private lodgings the sons of the principal families of the neighbourhood for education. About the year 1450, Thomas Bromele, abbot of the mitred monastery of Hyde near Winchester, entertained in his own abbatial house within that monastery eight young gentlemen, or gentiles pueri, who were placed there for the purpose of literary instruction, and constantly dined at the abbot’s table. I will not scruple to give the original words, which are more particular and expressive, of the obscure record which preserves this curious anecdote of monastic life. ‘Pro octo gentilibus pueris apud dominum abbatem studii causa perhendinantibus, et ad mensam domini victitantibus, cum garcionibus suis ipsos comitantibus, hoc anno, xviil. ixs. Capiendo pro[26]...’” This, by the way,
was more extraordinary, as William of Wykeham’s celebrated seminary was so near. And this seems to have been an established practice of the abbot of Glastonbury, “whose apartment in the abbey was a kind of well-disciplined court, where the sons of noblemen and young gentlemen were wont to be sent for virtuous education, who returned thence home excellently accomplished.[27]” Richard Whiting, the last abbot of Glastonbury, who was cruelly executed by the king, during the course of his government educated near three hundred ingenuous youths, who constituted a part of his family; beside many others whom he liberally supported at the universities.[28] Whitgift, the most excellent and learned archbishop of Canterbury in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, was educated under Robert Whitgift his uncle, abbot of the Augustine monastery of black canons at Wellhow in Lincolnshire, “who,” says Strype, “had several other young gentlemen under his care for education.” (Strype’s Whitgift, v. i. ch. i. p. 3.)
Of Lydgate—about 1420-30 A.D. I suppose—Prof. Morley says in his English Writers, vol. ii. Pt. I. p. 423:
“After studying at Oxford, Paris, and Padua, and after mastering with special delight the writings of such poets as Dante, Boccaccio, and Alain Chartier, Lydgate opened at his monastery of Bury St Edmund’s a school of rhetoric in which he taught young nobles literature and the art of versifying!”
Richard Pace says in his De Fructu, 1517:
“Now the learning of music too demands its place, especially from me whom it distinguished when a boy amongst boys. For Thomas Langton, bishop of Winchester (the predecessor of him who is now living), whose secretary I was, when he had marked that I was making a proficiency in music far beyond my age (as himself—perchance from his too great affection for me—would point out and repeatedly say), ‘The talent of this lad,’ he said, ‘is born for greater things,’ and a few days afterwards he sent me, to pursue the study of literature, into Italy, to the school at Padua, which then was at its greatest prime, and benevolently supplied the annual expenses, as he showed wonderful favour to all men of letters, and in his day played the part of a second Mecænas, well remembering (as he ofttimes said) that he had been advanced to the episcopal dignity on account of his learning. For he had gained, with the highest commendation, the distinctions of each law[29] (as they say now-a-days). Also he so highly prized the study of Humanity[30] that he had boys and youths
instructed in it at a school in his house; And he was vastly delighted to hear the scholars repeat to him at night the lessons given them by the teacher during the day. In this competition he who had borne himself notably went away with a present of something suitable to his character, and with commendation expressed in the most refined language; for that excellent governor had ever in his mouth the maxim that merit grows with praise.”[31]
EDUCATION AT HOME AND AT TUTORS’.